En Route to Misuku!

This entire summer experience in Malawi is one giant journey exploring the complexities of poverty in Malawi, finding leverage points for impact, embracing a new culture and having a bunch of fun. But the first journey I want to fill you in on is the classic type of journey: simply getting from Vancouver, Canada to Misuku, Malawi.

I left my mother wiping away her tears in Vancouver on the morning of May 6 destined for Toronto and EWB’s Junior Fellow pre-departure training. Annelies, Mike and I met and eventually made it to the EWB house in Little Portugal in Toronto where we would be packed in like sardines for one week with the other 11 JFs to Southern Africa and the 9 JFs to Burkina Faso. Ultimately this wasn’t too uncomfortable since we didn’t really get around to sleeping very often.

The purpose of this week was to really get us in the right mind-set to hit the ground running once we hit Africa. We touched on everything from health to rural livelihoods to power and privilege. It was an exhausting week packing so much into my head during the day and then socializing into the night tightening that JF network.


Before we knew it we were scrambling to do our laundry so as to leave for Africa with clean underwear. On the 13th we made the jump to Amsterdam which was followed by a few hops to Nairobi, Lusaka and finally Lilongwe arriving in the first hours of the morning. It was a bit tantalizing riding in the back of the truck from the airport to our hotel. Here we were surrounded by the foreign landscape of Malawi unable to see a thing in the dead of night and having yet to encounter more than a handful of Malawians. Despite the long flight and 6 hour time change we awoke the next morning raring to go. (Aside: we effectively switched to local time immediately. Our basic theory is that the complete lack of reasonable sleep pattern in Toronto and sporadic napping on the plane set us up perfectly.)



Ah! I have forgotten one especially important event of pre-departure. It is was in fact th defining moment of the week: the fortune cookies. Mine read as follows: “You will run into an old friend soon”. Come morning in Lilongwe it so transpired that my fortune was proved deadly accurate even twofold. There were the pleasant faces of Mike Kang and Anna-Marie Silvester waiting for me. This was one of the big purposes of those days in Lilongwe: connecting with our friends the OVS to understand our place in the big puzzle. The other goal was to launch us into the Malawian culture which they did effectively when we were dropped in the Lilongwe market. I toured it with Annette and we proceeded to get stared at, ripped off, pestered, hooted at, laughed at and likely talked about outrageously behind our backs. Silly white folks. But it’s mostly in good spirit and we were only ripped off because I was immediately frazzled during bargaining and didn’t push at all. We had fun though and one group definitely appreciated my dance as they played us some songs from a local star Lucius Banda.

The JFs emotionally parted ways on the 17th to head to our respective towns across Zambia and Malawi. Annette, Rob, Colleen, Alynne and I headed north kicking off my long journey to the tip of the country. Colleen and Alynne left us at Mzimba to join the District Water Office while we continued north destined for now for Mzuzu. We took a few days there to meet some staff at the Coffee Union head office and get to know the organization and some of its systems. Finally we were off to my final destination by the 21st. We loaded into a matola minibus. These work as shared taxis picking-up anyone who gives the distinctive side hand-flap then dropping them as requested. Of course these are small businesses for the driver and conductor team so there is accordingly no maximum number of people they will carry. These buses are reminiscent of a [very run-down] VW van with 3-ish bench seats. I counted a good 25 people in ours at one point between Mzuzu and Karongo. Thankfully we could get out at Karongo where we were met by Moses, the Misuku Co-op driver, to carry us the remainder of the way through the mountains to Mwalingo town in Misuku district, location of the co-op office and my home base for the next few weeks.